Sanjiv Lamba
Chief Executive Officer at Linde
Thanks Juan and good morning, everyone. By all measures 2022 was another successful year for Linde, despite the significant and unprecedented headwinds. I am incredibly proud how every employee rose to the challenge by not only delivering record financial performance, but also living our core values and supporting key initiatives for all stakeholders.
And while there are hundreds of daily examples where Linde employees have created real value through their commitment and determination, I'd like to highlight just a few on Slide 3. Starting with shareholders. We delivered record financial performance against the backdrop of an energy and inflation crisis, not seen in half a century. Three important metrics for our owners. Operating margin, EPS and ROC all reached record highs, both for the fourth quarter and the full year. In fact, we achieved our 9th quarter in a row of growing EPS ex-FX by 20% or more. On-top of that, $7 billion, almost 5% of our average market cap was returned to owners in the form of dividends and share repurchases.
We also expanded shareholder focus beyond fundamental results by identifying persistent technical constraints on Linde's stock valuation. The Board recommended a solution to simplify our exchange listing, which is approved by an overwhelming majority of shareholders. However, achieving sustainable long-term value-creation requires more than just a commitment to our owners. We need to successfully integrate all stakeholders, including employees, customers and the very communities we operate in.
So, on the environmental front, we continue to make great progress and 2022 was no exception. Looking at the numbers, we added 50 additional zero-waste sites in 2022 reaching 760 sites around the globe. We reduced absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by over 1 million tons of CO2 versus 2021, despite growing volumes. This was a good start towards our stated goal of reducing 35% greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, which was recently validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.
In addition, through the use of our technology, products and services we helped customers avoid more than 2 times the CO2 emissions from our operational footprint. These achievements have been recognized by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, CDP and several other independent organizations. And we are not only committed to reducing our own carbon footprint, but we're also playing a major role in the global energy transition, which I'll cover later.
Of course, none of this is possible without the commitment of our employees. When I measure performance and human capital, I first look to our longstanding company values of safety, integrity, inclusion, community and accountability. Our safety performance continues to be best-in class as defined by a double-digit improvement over 2021 and lost workday cases and commercial vehicle incidents.
Creating a diverse and inclusive environment where employees can achieve their full potential remains a priority for us. In support of this commitment, Linde has recently implemented a number of development programs across the enterprise. We're currently at 28% for agenda diversity, and I fully expect us to exceed 30% by 2030 across the entire organization.
The local nature of our business has also enabled over 500 different community engagement projects, an increase of 25% from 2021. Linde donated more than $10 million to support various charitable and STEM programs, including over $2 million in support of our Ukrainian employees and relief efforts. These highlights represent only a handful of accomplishments during the challenging 2022. However, here at Linde we have a relentless focus on how to improve, including better positioning ourselves for the future. And while we've had four great years since the merger. I'm even more optimistic looking ahead.
The $9.2 billion project backlog which we define as contractual growth project with secured returns, increased $2.4 billion versus the third quarter due to our OCI win, which I'll talk about shortly. Additionally, 2022 was another record year for small on-site wins as the 52 new contracts will provide secured revenue for the next decade or more. With this in mind, for 2023, we expect to invest almost $5 billion in capex and acquisitions across all three supply modes enabling high-quality growth while increasing asset density and reliability. Furthermore, we expect to start up over $2 billion in sale of gas projects this year, including $1.4 billion project with ExxonMobil in Singapore. You'll recall that this project is expected to start-up in phases beginning this summer. Therefore, we'll remove it from the backlog sometime during the middle of this year.
Of course, it's difficult to talk about growth today without mentioning key secular drivers. I'd like to remind everyone that a few years ago we stated how we would leverage the secular driver of electronics capacity expansions and win more than our fair share of high-quality projects. Our current project backlog of Tier 1 electronics customers validates that strategy as we continue to lead the industry. I view clean energy opportunities has been no different. I expect to win more than our fair share of high-quality projects across the energy transition spectrum. We are already partnering with global leaders and actively developing large-scale projects with contractual terms and conditions and scope that you'd become accustomed to with Linde.
This approach is consistent with what I mentioned last quarter, of course, it never hurts to reiterate. First, we intend to partner with subsurface experts for all underground operations. We're not geologists. Secondly, all projects will follow our investment criteria. In other words, earn a commensurate return for the risk undertaken. And finally, we will stick to our core, which is management of industrial gases. We have no interest to own or speculate on globally traded chemicals, rather we'll have offtake us for our products.
Our recent win with OCI perfectly aligns with these principles, which you can find on Slide 4. We will invest $1.8 billion as the long-term supplier of nitrogen and blue hydrogen into OCI's ammonia facility with terms and conditions and a return profile consistent with our traditional on-site contracts. OCI is an expert in ammonia production, logistics and marketing, something Linde doesn't want to engage in. In addition, we are partnering with a world-class oil and gas company for the CO2 sequestration. This blue hydrogen project is a great start, and we have several more large-scale energy projects under development. These opportunities follow our traditional gas model and involve partners that are global leaders in that space. In addition, we will continue to execute in our base business, managing pricing, productivity and increasing density across all three supply modes. Because we recognize that our owners appreciate the resilience of the industrial gas model.
Overall, 2022 was another stellar year despite the many headwinds. We achieved new highs across several key financial metrics, whilst relentlessly focusing on our core values. This is the fourth year in a row of double-digit EPS growth, and I see no reason why this won't continue. Stated simply, I have confidence that we will deliver strong results irrespective of the economic and geopolitical climate. From my vantage point, I've never been more confident about Linde's future.
I'll now turn the call over to Matt to walk you through the financial numbers.